The board of School District 72 (SD72) has approved a motion to increase trustee remuneration effective July 1.
The increase is based on a formula developed independently and adopted by SD72 in 2007. The formula suggests an increase of just over $1,000 for the chair, just under $1,000 for the vice-chair and around $940 for trustees. As of July 1, a chair will receive a remuneration of $19,279. The vice chair is $17,708, and trustees will receive $16,495.
"It looks at a combination of other school districts of similar size on the Island," says Kevin Patrick, the secretary-treasurer of SD72, on the formula used. "That's half of the formula. It looks at just what the average remuneration is for each position, but then it also breaks it down further. The other half of the impact is the number of students. It will break down their remuneration and into per student remuneration."
The remuneration is below the Island's average, which is $22,375.27 for the chair, $20,552.31 for vice chairs, and $19,144.61 for trustees. Districts 70 (Pacific Rim), 84 (Vancouver Island West), and 85 (Vancouver Island North) are the only districts lower than SD72.
"This was brought up quite a few years ago in that it's hard to give yourself a raise, and so it was thought the best way to do that was to select people from the community who are highly esteemed and for them to come up with a working formula," explains Daryl Hagen, a trustee, on the formula. "So now that recommendation has led to continuous raises or in the case of losing a population of going down, but at least you're not having to continually try to figure out how much we give ourselves for the raise."
According to Hagen, the district had the lowest-paid trustees in the province at one time due to trustees having "this little bit of self-pride that we do it out of the goodness of our hearts."
"But it's hard to tie in all the different aspects of being a school trustee without some kind of remuneration going with it and that people can afford daycare and the different things that go on. So that's where the process came in, and I think it's quite a fair one," he says.
The board reviews trustee remuneration annually.
